Tweets of Summer

[Public Garden, Boston; 9/11/10]

I posted fewer tweets this summer than in previous seasons, and several I did post felt flat. Perhaps it was the heat, which arrived early and decided to settle in like an overbearing house guest. I think of many of the snippets I tweet during long head-clearing walks on my lunch break, and this summer I rarely took more than brief walks out of sheer desperation to get out of the office, no matter how wilting the mid-day swelter. Summer is not a subtle season as a rule, and this summer was more in-your-face than usual. The bright assault of the sun and the hot, humid air sapped my energy. Wise thoughts and subtle observations retreated to the cooler lairs of my cerebellum, turning over full-system processing to perspiration, breathing, and heart pumping. I did, however, manage a few...

---  MAY ---

When her leaf-litter guise tires, she rises, vamps her tiger-striped wings, flutters off.

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Home from work at 6pm, I open every window to air and birdsong. It's May.

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The fresh scent of rain buds from a blossoming storm.

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Giant yellow irises, ample sepals lolling like hound dogs' tongues in the sun.

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Purple unitard-clad acrobats, petal handstand over sepal trapeze: Spring's iris circus.

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It's restaurant-kitchen hot out, purple and copper irises carmelizing like onions in a pan.

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At dawn, the crowing of a city siren. One alley bird chirps.

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--- JUNE ---

Below, brick walks undulate over tree roots and shifting fill. Above, uncertain skies and the rickety rattle of a battered air conditioner.

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After the storm, the air takes a breath mint.

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10pm: A halo backlights houses on Walnut from the soccer fields, a late-night game the full moon plays.

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Swimming the deep blue sky, a fish fossil in cirrus.

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--- JULY ---

The echinaceas turn themselves inside-out with sun-love, some sunny side up, some arched back as shuttlecocks awaiting their serve.

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A cormorant punctuates a docked sloop with a question.

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Humid, my hair triple-thick, spreading like dead Ophelia's in a pond of air.

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Midsummer frondescence: every sidewalk crack, chainlink and picket extrudes green, every pole and rail vine-enslaved.

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This morning's island-damp air, cool as beach stones, stirs the curtains. I am barefoot and in pajamas, appallingly late for work.

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Walking invites divination - the palmistry of sidewalk cracks, phrenology of stone walls, physiognomy of clouds.

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--- AUGUST ---

My bedroom shades can't suppress morning's infernal mirth.

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The sound of sexting in the cicadasphere.

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If only I could tug the strings on that giant Macy's-parade-balloon of a cloud up there to make its cooling rain shower down.

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Orange berries on the mountain ash, orange sun underground before eight, my heart bittersweet.

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Swell-headed sunflower ponders its roots.

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Under a first-quarter August moon, Chinese flute practice next door, a background of crickets.

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This morning's rain on the roof - an audience clapping.

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Chinese school children led down my street, strung together like lanterns.

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On the third day of rain, I wake to find my bed has sprouted tentacles, entwining me.

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And thus far in September:

Dessicated sunflowers stand like shut-off shower heads, a beach closed for the season.

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Comments

[Dave]

Some gems here! I like the sidewalk divination, sexting cicadas, and caramelizing irises especially. But yeah, I don't do my best writing in the summer, either. And I barely posted at all to my photoblog.

[marja-leena]

I like these, like "morning's infernal mirth". Cute strawberry too.

Summer heat is not conducive to creative thinking and activity for me either.

[Leslee]

Thanks, Dave and Marja-Leena. The cooler weather is here in the Northeast, so maybe cooler heads will prevail, as they say.

[beth]

Leslee, I admire you for keeping up at all in the summer! I love some of these, esp. - "frondescence" and those sexting cicadas Dave liked. (I've hardly been on Twitter at all since NaPoWrMo. Ach.)